A "rock" opera on creative process, performed at the Radclyffe Region Theater

It is not for you.

{Rated "I" for "Ideally 18+ But I Can't Stop You (And This Generally Applies To My Overall Body Of Work Going Forward)"

Mostly due to ~THE OCCASIONAL PRESENCE OF TANGENTIALLY-RELATED SEXUAL THEMES, WHICH I ESTIMATE ACCOUNTS FOR NO MORE THAN 1% OF THE TOTAL RUNTIME BUT WHATEVER~. Just covering all my bases here.}

{Lyrics are best read with Lyric+Note Sheet .pdf included in the download. 111 pages. 20 footnotes. 26,864 words. This is not only an album; it is a novella as wella. Understand what you're signing up for.}

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When observing the lives of so-called "tortured artists", there's one particular topic that the Relatable Comic-loving masses absolutely cannot get enough of: "Art Block", also known as "Writer's Block". A temporary blank slate! How horrific that must be. But have you ever considered how the OPPOSITE of an Art Block might feel? Like an Art Torrent, if you will. A creative force so relentless that it prevents you from spending time with friends or tending to your body's basic needs without feeling guilty for it, because any moment not spent bringing these ideas to life is a moment allowing them to pile up even further, so your downtime is instead spent absorbing as much relevant media as possible to maintain maximum inspiration at all times, which gives way to MORE ideas, which gives way to MORE absorption, which gives way to MORE ideas, which gives way to MORE absorption, which gives way to MORE ideas, which gives way to ABSOLUTE FUCKING MADNESS.

This is the story of Roxanne and her creative spirit Jonas. It's not just easy for Jonas to be creative; it's TOO easy. It is an active hazard to Roxanne's health. There is nothing she could possibly relate to less than the concept of "Art Block". So this opera is for her, and any voyeurs out there looking for a whole new kind of tortured artist to get their grubby little claws on. Come one, come all, as we once again GET SOME GODDAMN STICKBLOOD.

("Stickblood" is a term I made up for when a drummer drums so hard it causes their hands to bleed and stain the drumsticks. This is my choice of metaphor for my personal creative exhaustion & self-inflicted overworking. The album title's resemblance to the "Get Stickbugged" meme is purely coincidental, but I certainly don't mind if it made you cringe or otherwise baffled you regardless.)

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Welcome to the new beginning of Roxy Radclyffe as a full-time furry musician, in every possible sense of the term. Not only am I an artist who just happens to be a passionate furry, I am also specifically aiming to evoke a feeling of "transcendental furriness" within the music itself, an idea popularized by Patricia Taxxon in 2023 which has stuck with me ever since. One way to accomplish such a thing is through conceptual sound design, something I fully intend to keep exploring in the future, as it's rife with practically endless potential. However, I would also like to propose a sort of metatextual approach, which primarily finds its furriness in BEING CRINGE AS FUCK, consciously utilizing that perception of the fandom as a unique artistic asset rather than something to shy away from. Save for a few notable exceptions, I believe this aspect of our identity is currently underrepresented within the latest wave of indie furry albums, given the disproportionate amount of critic-friendly Tasteful Guitar Music™ among its most visible hits, perhaps indicating a subconscious desire for wider acceptance. That wouldn't be without reason, of course; today's sociopolitical climate is only getting worse for anyone who deviates from the norm, and I'd obviously never fault any individual artist for naturally developing those stylistic preferences either. I have no interest in stifling the existence of 'tasteful' furry music itself; rather, I want to help create the conditions for all kinds of furry music to thrive equally in their own ways, ideally shifting the musical overton window in a more shameless direction by setting such an extreme example. That is how I'm trying to embody the change I want to see, with my most gleefully self-indulgent embrace of unfairly maligned styles to date.

Aesthetically, this project combines two distinct angles of unabashed dorkiness. The first angle draws from the internet landscape of roughly 2010-2013, which saw the rise of flashy YouTube intro graphics backed by the most charmingly cheap brostep imaginable, all kinds of fandom music, obsessive SuperWhoLock posting, and homemade pop culture crossover mayhem in the form of series like Death Battle or Epic Rap Battles of History, just to name a few phenomena which particularly inspire me. But most important of all is the second angle, which draws from all styles associated with being a "theater kid". This one is for you guys. I see you, I love you, and deep down I am one of you. To some you're nothing more than a punchline, but I firmly believe that you & your art deserve far better than that. What you're witnessing here is an earnest celebration through and through. There is a type of guy out there whose absolute worst nightmare is this very album, and I find that delightful. We compromise for no one.

A (likely incomplete) list of people & projects whose artistic DNA had some noticeable influence on this album's creation, or at least crossed my mind during it:

6:33, AJR, Amanda Palmer, Andrew Hussie, Anthony Braxton, Autry!, BARR, black midi, Bo Burnham, Bohren & der Club of Gore, Caravan Palace, Cardiacs, Childish Gambino, Ciśnienie, Clayton Counts, Clown Core, Coheed and Cambria, Cursive, De Staat, Devil Doll, Devin Townsend, Diablo Swing Orchestra, FAKE TYPE., Fiona Apple, Friendly Clip Art, Fyear, Ghost, Glennon Doyle, Ground-Zero, HEART SHAPED HATE, i.o, Insane Clown Posse, Jack Douglass, James Chance & The Contortions, John Zorn, Kayo Dot, Keiji Haino, Kiss Kiss, Koenjihyakkei, Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris, Li Jianhong, Lily Allen, Marion Brown, Mark Z. Danielewski, mc chris, MC Lars, MIDI Bunny, Mike Patton, Monika Roscher, Mori Calliope, My Chemical Romance, Nice Peter & EpicLLOYD, Orthrelm, Oxbow, Parov Stelar, PhemieC, Pierce the Veil, Scott Walker, Set It Off, Shearling, Skin Tension, Skrillex, Skullflower, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Stabscotch, STOMACH BOOK, Sunik Kim, SuperMarioLogan, Supersilent, Swans, Tally Hall, Thank You Scientist, The Dear Hunter, The Living Tombstone, The Mars Volta, The Necks, The World/Inferno Friendship Society, Tim Minchin, Tiny Tim, To Live and Shave in L.A., Toby Fox, Toby Turner, Tom Waits, Twenty One Pilots, Vivienne Medrano, Vylet Pony, Water Damage, Weezer, Will Wood, William Parker, XTRATUNA, Zs, Zu

• My credited name here — "Roxanne Jonas and Her Robot Jazz Band" — is referencing the classic Monstercat release "Toothless Hawkins (And His Robot Jazz Band)" by Varien & Razihel.

• GET STICKBLOOD broke the record for longest mainline Roxy Radclyffe LP to date. Believe it or not though, during the initial planning phase I floated the idea of this album being even longer than it already ended up being.

"perhaps upwards of 8 hours in length?~?!"

It was also originally supposed to have a stronger presence of My Chemical Romance-like Emo-Pop choruses, but this (among other things) fell by the wayside as the project continued ballooning in scope. It wasn't even going to have 3 acts! Just 2! I added several more track titles to the draft about a quarter of the way through development.

• In the interest of rectifying this narrative's "fucked up chronology" and providing a new angle from which to analyze its metatext, here is the exact order of Track Production Completion, from oldest to newest:

2 > 1 > 3 > 4 > 9 > 5 > 6 > 13 > 22 > 19 > 17 > 21 > 20 > 11 > 23 > 15 > 14 > 7 > 10 > 16 > 27 > 12 > 8 > 26 > 25 > 18 > 24

See if you can discern the periods where I stop giving a fuck.

• The character Beau was named that purely because I wanted to make the "Place Beau Effect" joke. TRACK 6's title was conceived before any actual character traits.

• The opening riff of TRACK 7 was originally written for VIRLGOID, and moved here because I didn't have enough room for it over there.

Also, Beau namedropping "Bangarang" in SECTION I is the sole reason Skrillex is listed as one of the influences here. Well, I guess that and being my introduction to Brostep as a kid.

Also also, Jonas using the phrase "irons in the fire" there is meant to be a nod toward Vriska Serket from Homestuck. You could argue this is foreshadowing her directly quoting Andrew Hussie in SECTION II.

• SECTION II of TRACK 8 was originally supposed to be around 5 minutes long, bringing the total length to 10 minutes, but I ended up not writing enough to fill out that time, and for my own sanity chose not to stretch it out any further.

• Part of TRACK 11's title — "the sound,] People Injecting Olive Leaves Jokingly" — came from a brief exchange with a close friend of mine, where they sent me a keysmash and I spontaneously turned it into an acronym.

FRIEND — 8/17/2023 1:38 AM
ts]piolj

roxy — 8/17/2023 1:39 AM
The Sound,] People Injecting Olive Leaves Jokingly
yyou caught me in title brain thsi was my natural response

FRIEND — 8/17/2023 1:41 AM
sure

This was also when I first came up with the inciting incident that would eventually form GET STICKBLOOD's story as we know it.

roxy — 8/17/2023 1:56 AM
ii had a very specific weird scenario pop into my head earlier adn now i am deciding it is the whole-ass concept for th art rock album adn i ahve ascribed deeper meaning to it

(The "weird scenario" in question is what unfolds in the opening skit.)

Also, the phrase "THE FREAKY ANIMAL" (sung in SECTION IV) is derived from a silly phrase my girlfriend often uses, "the freaking animal", which we've continued to iterate on by swapping "freaking" with various other words depending on context. I got the idea for that hook on the way home from my first ever in-person visit with her, and since then we've regularly referenced it to each other, using it as a sort of theme song for Freaking Animals.

• TRACK 12 was arguably the most difficult to produce, if only because all instances of the piano plugin I was using kept resetting every time I reopened the project, and the file browser stopped letting me preview audio before dragging it into the timeline, a particularly nasty bug that only seems to affect the most complex of arrangements. Even with an actually good computer, I still manage to break my DAW without even trying. All of that is why I chose to strip back the intricate sound collaging for the final two sections.

Also, Beau's vocals in the beginning were actually recorded before I'd even specifically assigned that voice to Beau, and were originally just meant to represent a General Annoying Presence.

Also also, the "go die in a pit of fire" sample heard at the very end originates from an old Blockland forum post where various users revealed their voices with links to Vocaroo clips.

• In SECTION III of TRACK 14, the lyric mentioning "thorn rings" is referencing DELTARUNE, drawing a parallel between the events of the 'Weird Route' and the cutthroat workaholic in my brain.

• While recording the vocals for TRACK 15, I accidentally had the gain knob on my microphone cranked way higher than normal. This happened to work to SECTION I's benefit, but not so much for the remaining vocals, so I had to re-record those.

• The ukulele played in TRACK 17 & TRACK 20 is a cheap Strawberry Shortcake toy I found in a Five Below.

• TRACK 18's chorus calls back to the swing drum pattern used in TRACK 6's hook, reclaiming that energy from Beau in service of an instructional song that doesn't nearly lead to Jonas' demise. I love cinematic parallels!!!

Also, before that, the lyric "For when you've been convinced your throat is closing" is a callback to the XPERIENCE Everything track "Convincing Myself My Throat Is Closing". This album in general could arguably be viewed as a spiritual sequel to that one, even if they Sound quite different. It's about the themes, y'know?

• The MIDI guitar solo Friendly Clip Art contributed to TRACK 24 delayed the release of this album by about 4 hours. That was the final thing I was waiting on, and this was Fine. Another win for Delay.

• TRACK 27's title is a play on the iconic UNDERTALE quote "Despite everything, it's still you." Obviously.